As my fellow Malaysiakini columnist Mariam Mokhtar has already commented, a great many people were – or at least pretended to be – offended by human rights lawyer Siti Kasim’s giving hecklers the middle finger after she spoke at a syariah forum.

And I would like to say that I not only endorse every sentiment that Mariam expressed in support of Siti’s ‘up yours’ gesture and general attitude, but that I additionally find it absolutely inspirational.

Because it has pointed-out to me that what I’ve been actually been employing through all my years of pouring scorn and derision on Malaysia’s poisonous and pernicious regime is not just, as it’s most commonly called, a keyboard, but also a fingerboard.

Or, more precisely, given that I have never taught myself to touch-type properly, mostly a middle-fingerboard on an electronic device that is itself aptly called ‘digital’.

So now, and every time I hit a key in the future, I can rejoice in the awareness that I am not just pointing the finger at the criminal, the incompetent and the ignorant, but also assaulting them digitally.

Which is highly appropriate when you think of it, as the problem with all these Umno/BN politicians and their accomplices and cronies is that they can’t or won’t keep their thieving fingers off public property, or their meddling digits out of peoples’ religious beliefs and other issues that are none of their business.

Nor can a good many of them, as in the case of Malaysia’s hopelessly politicised police force and regime-complicit corruption agency, keep their fingers off ‘suspects’ or even some witnesses, like the late Teoh Beng Hock, who happen to fall into their homicidal hands.

And, perhaps worst of all, those properly charged with exposing, punishing and thus protecting the populace from political predators and parasites, like the so-called ‘mainstream news’ media and the grossly-misnamed ‘justice’ system, are so hopelessly under the Umno/BN thumb that they seldom if ever lift a finger to perform their proper functions.

If all that wasn’t sufficient cause for us all to give Umno/BN the digital salute, of course, then there are all the regime’s political, religious and racial finger-puppets, like Rela, Jakim and Gerakan Merah.

This latter group most openly inviting of being given the middle finger, literally bending over for it as they did in the so-called ‘butt dance’ this bunch of bums did for the purpose of insulting then co-chairperson of Bersih, Ambiga Sreenevasan back in 2012, a performance they recently announced that they plan to repeat for current chairperson of Bersih, Maria Chin Abdullah.

President of Gerakan Mera, Mohd Ali Baharom, alias Ali Tinju, has also called Maria Chin an ‘animal’ and suggested to his rabble of ‘red shirts’ (please read the ‘shirts’ word here without the ‘r’, as I’ve suggested before) that she ‘may no longer walk this earth’, which sounded to many of us like a death threat, or at least incitement to murder.

But not, apparently, to Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, or to his henchman, inspector-general of police Khalid Abu Bakar, who is presumably too busy with his notorious tweeting to get his finger out and order the arrest of Ali Tinju or any other paid regime troublemaker.

And there’s no point crossing our fingers and hoping that Umno/BN or any of its ministers, members or minions have the slightest intention of getting their snouts out of the trough and their fingers or rather trotters off the levers of power anytime soon.

In fact, far from getting the message that millions of Malaysians are showing them the middle finger, they clearly intend to indefinitely linger, as evidenced by their electoral commission’s current redistribution antics and efforts to replenish their war-chest, or should I say whore-chest, through their standard procedure of contracting-out massively kickback-inflated ‘public works’, in anticipation of the next general election.

All that the rest of us can hope for, unfortunately, is help from the fickle finger of fate, as currently observable at work through investigations by the Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and agencies in several other jurisdictions around the world into the massive 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) fraud.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, creator of the ludicrously false ‘1Malaysia’ concept, has already been fingered as Malaysian Official 1 in the DOJ findings so far, and proof of his spouse Rosmah Mansour’s complicity in this and possibly other scams has been provided by the millions she has splurged on fashion, handbags and fabulously expensive diamond rings for her fat fingers.

But hey, my fingers have been so busily and happily tapping away here that I’ve almost reached my word limit without noticing. That’s the beauty of my new perception of typing about Umno/BN as typing as showing this disgusting regime my middle and other digits. And once again I must thank the indomitable Siti Kasim for revealing to me how much more enjoyable critical writing can be than I formerly realised.